Presiding over his first hearing since he was named chair of the House Appropriations Committee\u2019s Defense Subcommittee, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) showed that not even members of Congress are immune to first-day-on-the-job jitters.<\/p>\n
He wrapped up the second part of his smoothly-delivered introduction to this morning\u2019s defense budget hearing with, \u201cI\u2019d like to call on the Ranking Member of the full committee, Mr. Obey, for any comments he\u2019d like to make.\u201d The problem? \u2018Ranking Member\u2019 is a secondary, minority title held by Rep. Don Young (R-AK). Rep. David Obey (D-WI) is the chair<\/em> of the committee \u2013 a position controlled exclusively by Democrats, as long as they remain in the majority.<\/p>\n Obey, however, refused to hand over his powerful chairmanship so easily. \u201cDid we lose the election?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t lost it yet,\u201d Dicks replied.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to, either,\u201d Obey assured the other members and witnesses in attendance. \u201cI’m used to this kind of calumny from the other side of the aisle\u2026We’re operating at somewhat of a disadvantage, because he’s very inexperienced, he’s only been on this subcommittee 31 years, and so he has a shortage of knowledge in terms of the issues at hand. In all seriousness, I think people understand him to be a serious, dedicated, and tenacious member of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Dicks was named chair of the subcommittee in March, following the death of former chair Rep. John Murtha (D-PA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Presiding over his first hearing since he was named chair of the House Appropriations Committee\u2019s Defense Subcommittee, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) showed that not even members of Congress are immune to first-day-on-the-job jitters. He wrapped up the second part of his smoothly-delivered introduction to this morning\u2019s defense budget hearing with, \u201cI\u2019d like to call on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6348,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}